Take Me Out to the Ballroom

Our senior citizen President has regressed to building monuments to himself

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Over the past few months, Donald Trump’s erratic behavior, questionable decisions, and inane statements have raised concerns about his mental health. Don’t worry, my friends: I'm here to tell you that he is the same malignant narcissistic sociopath he’s always been, just older and much less wiser. In the increasingly crowded field of American scam artists, compared to Trump, a PhD in grifting and corruption, fraudsters like Bernie Madoff and Sam Bankman-Fried were middle school lunch money thieves. Now it seems that he’s lost his grip on the artificial reality that he spent a lifetime creating. Being a legend in your own mind only works as long as you don’t lose your mind. For Trump, whose self-image is that of the ultimate winner, his growing failures in the world the rest of us inhabit are driving him bonkers.

It’s not as if there was ever any substance to that image. The persona of the successful real estate developer is at odds with the man’s record. Going back decades, there is nothing to indicate that Donald Trump had any special talent except to gull the trusting and unsuspecting, whether they be viewers of The Apprentice, adoring low-information voters, or bankers beguiled by his chutzpah. It is difficult to imagine Trump as a CEO of a large public company, managing thousands of employees and reporting to a board of directors. The Presidency is a far more complex position, requiring not only sophisticated executive skills but also a capacity for moral leadership and morale building. Having come out ahead in the popularity contests we call elections, Donald Trump reached the maximum level of his incompetence and became the ultimate embodiment of The Peter Principle.¹ In truth, Donald Trump is an actor, playing the role of our President. He is obviously miscast.

It is not surprising that the country’s second go-round with Trump has resulted in never-ending kakistocratic chaos: the tariff madness, the immigration crackdown, the blatant corruption, the sledgehammer attack on the Federal government by Elon Musk’s DOGE. Trump populated his administration with morons, sychphants, and ideologues. He broke his campaign promises to curb inflation and to keep us out of wars. In 15 months, the national debt grew by $3 trillion and is now over $38 trillion. But in Trump’s version of reality, the U.S. is entering an economic boom: “We are the hottest country anywhere in the world, ” he told the audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos in January. Yet another instance of premature declaration.

But Trump didn’t count on being ambushed by none other than Donald Trump. Having plunged the country into yet another Middle East war, Trump is now boxed in by an Iranian regime that understands he is desperate to get out and declare a victory. He is now a leader without cards to play… Except perhaps to threaten to wipe the Persian civilization off the map. But, whether or not he arranges an awkward exit, the mess he’s created will affect the global economy for months, and the damage done to our international relations will take years to repair.

So now the man who speaks about himself in the third person is unable to avoid the pressure brought on by the incessant failures, and by the imminent danger he believes exists if the Epstein files become public. He is acting increasingly manic, lashing out at NATO allies and attacking Pope Leo in his Truth Social posts. His popularity is sinking deeper than the Marianas Trench, his MAGA cult is splintering, and he is leading the Congressional Republicans off the electoral cliff. He is frantically grasping at straws, searching for a way to change a narrative that’s slipped out of his tiny hands.

I am not a psychologist or any other type of trained medical expert, but I believe our soon-to-be-80-year-old President may be showing signs of the dementia generally associated with aging. There is evidence of regression, of returning to a previous time in his life, to his enthusiasm for building structures and for putting his name on properties. Roads, airports, and parks are being renamed. His signature will appear on $100 bills. The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts is now the Donald J. Trump- John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts.

And then here are his pet projects, the giant gilded ballroom that will replace the demolished East Wing of the White House, and a 250-foot-tall arch to be located near Arlington Cemetery. These projects are controversial and are being challenged in court. Given his focus on them and his complaints about the efforts to block them, they are more important to Trump than the war, the economy, and the country’s slide in status. The ballroom is a monument to Trump himself, larger than the White House itself. The arch in Arlington would be taller than the Lincoln Memorial. None of this was done with the necessary legal approval.

And thus, as the world turns, its longest enduring representative democracy is on the brink of the Trumpocalypse, a crisis brought on by a demented senior citizen and the inept embarrassments that populate his Administration. This is the American Carnage Trump warned about at his first inauguration nine years ago. Like most things Trump touches, he got it wrong: he didn't fix it; he made it worse. America’s standing in the world has taken a hit, but for those of us who think about the principles we believed this nation represented, it's time for serious national introspection and to consider what must be done to move forward.

If we are not up to the task, we will be content to watch on our screens as the rich and infamous attend galas in the gilded Trump Ballroom.

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1. The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong (William Morrow and Company, 1969) is a book by Laurence J. Peter and Raymond Hull that argues that “In a hierarchy, people tend to rise to the level of their incompetence.”